Concentrated Solar Thermal Electricity In Europe – Snapshot 2012

At the end of September 2012 CSP plants with a cumulative capacity of about 1.73 GW were in commercial operation in Spain about 72% of the worldwide capacity of 2.4 GW. Together with those plants under construction and those already registered for the feed-in tariff this should bring Spain’s CSP capacity to about 2.5 GW by 2013. This capacity is equal to 60 plants which are eligible for the feed-in tariff.

Installed and planned Concentrated Solar Thermal Electricity Plants

In total projects with a total capacity of 15 GW have applied for interconnection. This is in line with the European Solar Industry Initiative, which aims at a cumulative installed CSP capacity of 30 GW in Europe out of which 19 GW would be in Spain [2]. More than 100 projects are currently in the planning phase mainly in Spain, North Africa and the USA. The current average investment costs for the solar part are given in various projects at around € 4/W. Depending whether the plant has a backup in the form of a fossil fired gas turbine and/or a thermal storage the project costs can increase up to € 14/W. A lot of projects are scheduled to become operational until 2013. If the announced schedules are kept, the current installed capacity of about 1.5 GW should more than triple to 4.7 GW in 2013.